We tend to think of waste as something we no longer want. When these unwanted items are put into bins they are taken to a landfill site and buried.
Over the years we have become so used to putting our "waste" out for someone else to deal with that we have become a throwaway society. However, there is now a realisation that dumping items we no longer want into landfill sites is not a sustainable option, not only because it's environmentally unsound, but also because we are simply running out of holes in the ground. How to dispose of the ever-increasing amount of waste we generate has become a huge problem and we are now under enormous pressure to minimise what goes into landfill. Every single one of us can help make a difference if we take some responsibility for the waste that we produce.
Leicester City Council provides a two-tier recycling service to help households maximise the amount of waste they recycle, however we still have a long way to go to reach the recovery target of 67% by 2015 set by the Landfill Directive
The European Landfill Directive means that the Government has an international legal obligation to minimise the amount of waste this country disposes of in landfill. Of the waste that we put into our
wheeled bins up to 95% could be recovered by
recycling,
composting or through waste to energy plants.
